


Form and Function

by Baconfat



Category: Mortal Engines Series - Philip Reeve
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-17 05:59:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5856829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baconfat/pseuds/Baconfat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shrike makes some repairs. (Shrike and Hester, pre-series.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Form and Function

There were twelve clocks in Shrike's workshop. Two of them were fast, ticking the seconds away too quickly, and three were slow, tocking a moment later than they should. Shrike could hear them all. He knew the length of a second. He'd lived centuries of seconds, and he'd felt each one.

Hester's thin, fragile arms were crossed as she watched him work, her one eye peering and her face in a childish scowl. "Shrike," she asked, "why are you fixing that? I don't like it."

"IT IS IN NEED OF REPAIR," Shrike replied, and continued his work.

"What's it supposed to be?"

"AN ANGEL OF DEATH." And it was nearly reassembled, delicate copper-wire tendons strung inside the metal shell. The scythe was chipped, the grinning skull was missing teeth, and the black robe was in dusty tatters, but they could be mended easily enough. Inside was where the damage was worst, the wires that gave it life frayed into tangled spiderwebs.

"...Death?" There was uncertainty in her voice, but she stepped closer to get a better look.

"IN THE PAST, IT WAS BELIEVED THAT WHEN THE TIME CAME FOR A MAN TO DIE, A MESSENGER FROM THE GODS WOULD CUT HIM DOWN WITH A SCYTHE." Hester looked doubtfully at the broken scythe, and Shrike marvelled again at the senseless beliefs of the Once-Born. Shrike knew death, knew that it had no form, no robe, no skeleton smile. Death was darkness, and emptiness, and silence.

Life was Shrike's dozen clocks, ticking and ticking, chiming odd hours.

"It's ugly," Hester said with finality, and Shrike flicked his eyes away from her face to look again at the angel.

"IT IS DAMAGED," Shrike agreed. The hourglass tied to the shabby robe was broken, the sand inside long spilled out.

"What's it do?"

Hester was constantly questioning him, asking about his collection. Always the same questions: _What's it for? What's it do? Why?_

Shrike called up the answer, pulling it out of the recesses of his Stalker brain, uncertain where it came from and barely interested. "IT WAS PART OF A CLOCK. THE SCYTHE WAS USED TO STRIKE THE HOUR." The slaver Shrike had purchased it from had been eager to be rid of it.

The slaver Shrike had purchased it from had asked if Hester was for sale. When Shrike had told him she was not, the man had asked why. _What do you need a girl for, anyway? She part of your collection? You going to repair her?_

Shrike had killed him, slid his claws into the Once-Born's soft belly, slid them out again. Watched with detached interest as the man's entrails spilled out between his fingers, blood and life seeping out of him, into the ground.

"Do you have the rest of the clock?" Hester asked, in the present, and Shrike put the memory away.

"NO."

Hester touched a finger to the blade of the scythe, and Shrike wondered if she would cut herself, bleed like the slaver had. "So even if you fix it, you can't make it work," she said. She didn't bleed; bits of caked-on mud crusted off the blade, and she wiped her hands carelessly on her clothing. "What a waste of time."

"IT IS DAMAGED," Shrike answered her, and went back to work.

When the automaton was repaired, it stood in Shrike's workshop wearing its skinless grin, staring its empty-socket stare.

When Hester was gone, Shrike was alone, and the clocks kept ticking and ticking, marking the seconds.


End file.
